The Painter
by robin baby
Summary: Albus finds out that you really do live and learn. Or, in this particular case, die and learn. And along the way, he meets someone he hasn't seen in a long, long time. Set towards the end of HBP ... or is it?


**Disclaimer: **Whatever you recognize isn't mine, including the last sentence which you'll find to be one of JKR's own from the Deathly Hallows, just slightly adapted.  
Also, the tidbit of conversation marked with a [*] is a reference to the Lord of the Rings story "Waiting" by Dot1.

**A great many thanks** to my two beta-readers, Sternenlicht and YouKnowMyNameDon'tYou, and apologies for any comments that were ignored! ;)

Have fun reading, and do leave me review!

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_**The Painter**_

"Merlin's shrunk underpants!" exclaimed Albus Percival Brian Wulfric Dumbledore in delight, as soon as his lips were finished.

His comment was met with a raised eyebrow, snowy white and almost as bushy as his own. A soft clicking sound was the only acoustic response, though, as delicate, well-worn wood tapped against the brittle-looking rim of a seashell.

"I beg to be excused," he said cheerfully. "I found it quite inconvenient, having to be silent for all this while, chatterbox that I am."

A set of different-coloured eyes peered up at him, one a soft, warm brown like leaves in late autumn, the other a peculiar, deep green reminiscent of an ocean.

"Rome wasn't built in a day," the Painter pointed out.

"Oh, most certainly not," Albus agreed, smiling widely. He could taste the paint on the tip of his tongue. "I meant in no way to be impudent. After all, you cannot do an awful lot about my being dead, I daresay."

They were sharp, intense eyes, and utterly unfathomable while they kept studying Albus thoughtfully, the mind behind them pondering what, he could not tell  
After a moment, though, they narrowed the slightest bit, and focused entirely on the old wizard's own eyes, twin eyes, both the same colour. Aquamarine at the bottom, blue topaz brushed in, then sapphire and cobalt, in equal measures, Prussian blue and only the barest hints of a midnight shade.  
A tricky colour to get right. But the Painter was satisfied.

"I suppose there always _is_ more to discover, is there not?" Albus asked, as he began to look about himself. He sounded rather pleased. "You do live and learn, after all, it seems." He thought about that for a moment, then chuckled. "Or rather, in this particular case, die and learn."

The room that lay before him seemed to be circular, with wide lead glass windows spaced evenly along the wall, their frames obscured by heavy curtains in rich, dark colours, reaching from the vaulted ceiling to the floor.  
It was cluttered at best, full of easels and carved picture frames, paintings half hidden beneath white cloth, and shelves overfull with things Albus thought he should but could not recognize. A divan with upholstery the colour of oyster-shells was wedged in the space between two windows, between a wooden chest on one and a stack of colourful cushions on the other side.  
"It was one of the mysteries I always dreamed to unravel," he said, "the nature of this place."

The man sitting in front of him turned to an ornate wooden table to his right, picking up the top of some small animal's skull.  
"Well," he replied, as if relaying a piece of information about the history of some castle ruin in the English countryside, "this place is one of the mysteries that can never be unravelled."

Albus smiled cheerily as the Painter began to sketch the pattern of beads and cord onto the collar of his robes.

"Oh yes, I suppose so."

There was a whooshing sound, faint and distant, like wind. The Painter's mahogany stool creaked as he leaned out of Albus' field of vision, towards the table again, and back, mixing crimson and russet on his palette.

His hands were slim and wiry, brown and wrinkled, but their movements were very elegant and sure. His face was lined and not young anymore, but not old either, tanned beneath a shock of white hair. His expression was serious and concentrated.

"Is there another room?" asked Albus.

"No."

"And a door?"

"No."

Albus glanced towards one of the windows, behind which he saw only sky and clouds. "Is there a ground beneath this house?"

The Painter looked up at him, dipping his brush in a crystal cup filled with equally crystalline water. The blood red colour faded from the brush's black hairs, but the water remained immaculately clear.

A mild frown ghosted about the Painter's brow. "Naturally," he said. "What else should it stand upon?"

Albus smiled. "And where is it?" he inquired. "Where _are _we?"

The frown manifested itself then, while the armrest of the brown leather chair emerged from a nothingness of deepest red beneath Albus' left hand.

"_Where?"_ the Painter repeated. He was silent for a long while after that, piecing the armrest together fibre by fibre, two-coloured eyes firmly fixed on brush and canvas.  
"I don't know what that is," he finally told the Headmaster.

He straightened up to examine his work, the creases on his forehead instantly smoothing out. He had already forgot Albus' curious question. Again, he cleaned his brush and then chose a diminutive pot of shining gold from his table.

Albus watched him with immense interest. He found it thrilling to be here, in the place where the portraits of the dead were made. Once the Painter was finished, Albus knew, his own portrait would appear in the headmaster's study at Hogwarts, and no one would know where it had come from. Not even if they had spent hours and days and weeks in the office, waiting – and he knew that, because, through the long course of history, people had occasionally done just that, at Hogwarts and in other places – they would, for some inexplicable reason, just have missed the portrait's appearance.

No one had ever solved that riddle. But then again, it wasn't supposed to be solved, it seemed.

Briefly, Albus wondered whether he would forget this place again, once he was back at the school. Had all the others forgot, too? Was that why no one had ever spoken of the Painter and his room without doors? And where _was_ this room?

It almost made him giggle in a manner most unbecoming of a dignified wizard.

Albus Dumbledore loved puzzles and unanswered questions. Through the course of his long life, the world had almost run out of such questions to present him with. Therefore, he found this new situation (which might be referred to as _death_) most exciting.

"Well," the Painter's voice broke into his musings, "Albus Dumbledore. I have to say that not even I have many visitors of such prominence up here."

"Ah," Albus said amusedly, "fame, that fickle thing." At that, the two-coloured eyes looked at him searchingly for a moment.

"Hm."

It might have been a reply worthy of some probing, but for the time being, Albus was more interested in his surroundings … and, of course, the laughter.

It rippled through the room like a summer breeze, clear, melodious and quite unexpectedly, originating somewhere behind Albus. To his embarrassment and the Painter's annoyance, the old wizard jumped at the sudden occurrence. His – hitherto supposedly only – companion put his palette down on the table with some emphasis and set about amending the dark red smudge that had ended up on the front of Albus' blue robes, muttering something under his breath.

"Oh, this would delight Aberforth," a sweet voice said. "A roomful of things our dear brother has no clue about."

He craned his neck, trying to defy any laws of space and see out of his two-dimensional picture and around the golden frame. And ignored the Painter's exasperated sigh at this folly.

She laughed at it as well as she stepped around the frame, looking at Albus with her clear blue eyes, lighter in colour than his own, like water and sky. She wore a simple dress, her long blonde hair falling loosely around her shoulders, and looked as delicate as ever, delicate and graceful.

Of course she did. She was long dead, after all. Little Ariana.

Albus couldn't quite bring his paint-lips to shape her name, even though she stood there, smiling. It was all supremely confusing. The strangeness of this place, above all. And how she could be here. Flesh and bone and a powdery white dress and giggles.

She went to sit on the divan, pulled her knees to her chest, her smile folded up into a pursed-lipped little smirk. That smirk of her very own, the one he remembered from their childhood. It seemed, as it always had, to hide something, something amusing only she was privy to.

"Oh well," Albus said at last, quite perplexed to hear himself talking, "that isn't so very unusual, really. You would be surprised how lost I'd be if I were to explain some of the things in the Room of Requirement."

The Painter's bushy eyebrows went up a bit, and Albus had to agree with him. That was a funny thing to say to his sister after all those decades. She chose not to favour the comment with a reply, but instead asked, amusement still playing about the corners of her mouth, "Why don't you come out of there, big brother? It would be a lot more convenient, you know."

Albus looked at her in confusion. "Is that possible?"

The Painter threw him a look that clearly said he was momentarily doubting the old wizard's alleged remarkable cleverness. "Well," he said, with a jerk of his head towards Ariana, "she's rather three-dimensional over there, isn't she?"

That much couldn't be denied. "Well …," Albus said slowly, "what do I have to do, then?"

Ariana sighed an exasperated little sigh and got up. She walked over to her brother and held out her hand to him. The canvas didn't seem to bother her.

Albus hesitated for a moment, then he took her small, delicate fingers in his own and was just about to wonder what would happen next, when he was already standing on a set of quite normal-looking and –feeling feet. "Oh," he said, delighted.

On the off-chance of being able to retrace the step out of the portrait into an actual room, he threw a glance over his shoulder that first plunged to the colourful carpet and then climbed the easel's right leg back up the portrait. With surprise, Albus realized that his being out here apparently did not contradict his also being on the canvas. The paint-Albus looked a little less lively that the actual one (or was he?) felt, blinking somewhat sleepily and seeming quite content to do nothing at all for the time being. Albus decided not to disturb him for a while.

Ariana went back to the divan between the two windows and sat down, her legs folded beneath her, watching while her brother tested the stability of his legs.

In truth, of course, he was merely buying time. It was astounding how unprepared he felt for this encounter. So many years, wars and wisdom had done nothing to steel him against his sister's gentle, forever-young eyes. It almost made him flinch to feel her gaze on him.

... And so he went to one of the windows and peered outside, trying to determine the location of this place, even if he had already accepted the fact that there probably was no such thing as a _location_, in this case.

There was only sky, perfect blue streaked with a few feathery clouds. From somewhere, brilliant orange, gold and yellow rose into that blue, but Albus could not see the horizon. It didn't seem to exist.

He leaned further forward, trying to see past the windowsill and downwards.

"There's nothing sensational out there, you know?" the Painter's voice came from behind. Its tone made it quite clear that the man was still wondering about Albus' behaviour. "Only a vegetable patch. I'm sure you've seen something similar before."

A vegetable patch. That was when Albus gave up on his quest for consistent information.

Some things just were not made to be understood.

So he finally turned to Ariana, who was still watching him, with her blue eyes so like his own, from the divan, her secret smile lingering.

Slowly, he went to sit beside her.

"Ariana," he began, not quite knowing how to put what he wanted, and needed to say. He thought about the Resurrection Stone, and what he had meant to do with it. If he had carried out his plan, would he have been better prepared, or would he have stood before his sister and mother, quite dumbstruck by their mere sight, too?

Ariana waited patiently while he fumbled for words. "Do you … do you know who …," he trailed off again, quite unable to say the words out loud. How uncharacteristic, he thought. Albus Dumbledore at a loss for words. When had that last happened?

His sister's lips curved in an astonishingly amused smile. "Which of you three idiots killed me?" she supplied helpfully.

"Well … yes."

"No," she answered, "but if it was you or Aberforth, you've already been forgiven. I know you never meant to hurt me." She paused, and a shadow of irritation knitted her brow. "If it was that dork Grindelwald, though, _he_ has definitely _not_ been forgiven. I rather like to think that it was all his fault anyway."

Another brief pause, then she suddenly leaned across and punched her brother on the shoulder. "I _am_ rather cross with you for not once coming to visit me at our brother's in all these years, though."

"Not once?" the Painter cut in, peering across the room at Albus, sounding mildly scandalized. Albus shot him a sharp look, and the man hurriedly went back to his work.

The wizard turned back to his sister and sighed, his gaze dropping to his hands. "What can I say?" he murmured. Involuntarily, he wondered what Tom Riddle would have to say if he saw his great adversary knuckling under to a sweet little girl, sweet little Ariana. Most likely, even Lord Voldemort would be rather surprised by that, he thought.

"I was afraid," he finally admitted. Ariana looked a bit incredulous. "One of the most frightening things in the world," Albus said quietly, "I have always thought, is the irreconcilable anger, the hatred of a loved one. Wouldn't you agree?" The questions was posed very softly, almost embarrassed.

Ariana punched him for the second time. "Hatred," she said, in a voice that made it rather clear that that was one thing she had never felt towards her older brother. "And you thought that staying away would make things better?"

Albus pursed his lips. "I suppose I did. I never meant it to be for that long, though."

His sister raised an eyebrow at him. "Not quite until you were dead, hm?" He had to laugh. "Well," she continued, "it is fortunate, then, that you cannot so easily hide away from me here, isn't it?"

He merely smiled. For the time being, he found himself unable to do much else. "You look ..." He was about to say 'well', but that would not have done the truth justice. He wanted to say 'beautiful', but that was nonsense as well. She had always been beautiful, even on the worst days. "Happy," he finally decided.

Ariana smiled brightly. "Yes, I've found that death agrees very well with me, in fact. It has made me calm."

Albus winced a little at the word 'death', and the memories it at once flung at him, but she said it so easily and without the slightest pause, it really was hard to keep thinking of the monstrous, pitch black shadow death so often was.

"Well," he replied, managing a little smile of his own, "who would have thought that death could be such a good thing?" Try as he might, though, there was a stubborn cloud of heaviness that would not be moved to let go of his voice.

A little pout moved Ariana's lips as she slung her arms around her legs and studied her brother with attentive eyes. Albus felt as though she could tell each and every of his emotions apart from next with her gaze, and it was quite a novel feeling for him. Used to being elusive and inscrutable, as a great old wizard like him should be, it was a slightly unsettling feeling. A bit like losing hold of what was happening around him.

"You don't have to be sad for me, Albus," Ariana said after a while, confirming her brother's suspicion about that searching gaze of hers. She could read him quite easily. "It's true, you know? There are those who are better off here than in life."

A small smile demanded to be displayed, and Albus really had no power to deny it. Here she was, gentle Ariana, telling him it did not matter that he, or his friend, or their angry brother, had killed her all those years back. That it was quite alright, and certainly nothing to bet upset over.

He sighed, turning back to the sky where clouds where slowly crawling into view now, clambering their way across the rectangular windows. Gradually, and smoothly, like very portly creatures.

"But there are also those whom life would still have a great deal to offer to, aren't there?" he asked of them quietly.

When they gave no answer, Ariana replied in their stead. "Whom are you thinking of?"

This time, the smile was pained. "Ah, Harry, the dear boy."

Ariana bowed her head a little, then she slowly bent to rest her chin on her knees. Her brother looked at her suddenly, an expression of slight confusion on his face, as if he had just woken from a dream. He frowned at her, but she merely smiled. "I know about him. The Painter has told me."

If the artist had heard his name (for it seemed unthinkable now that he should be anything but just 'The Painter') being spoken, he did not react at all. He was busy rummaging in his pocket, his brush clamped between his thumb and the palette, and eventually he extracted a bonbon wrapped in bright red paper.

Albus thought that that was a strangely ordinary thing to do for so obscure a person, until the man tugged at one of the twisted paper-ends. The wrapping came open and lime green colour poured onto the palette.

"Why did you do it again, Albus?" There was a profound sadness in her voice. Sorrow had settled on her face and creased her forehead. The look on her face breathed a chill into the vicinity of his canvas-and paper heart.

"Did what?" he asked, wondering if he already knew. Ariana smiled.

"Dream up such a fantastic plan. Pull people in until they could not free themselves anymore?"

A sudden bout of stubbornness made Albus shake his head. "I never pulled you into my plans," he said, a little fear in his voice.

"Yes, you did," she gently replied. "It doesn't matter whether or not I was meant to play a part. I was close to you and I trusted you and then everything broke apart. You never came to visit me. You never spoke to Aberforth again." She hopped to her feet, a movement so lively that it seemed to contradict the heavy memories that hovered like mist and the pain that fell from then like tiny droplets of water.

With a few steps, she had reached him and wrapped her small hands around his arm. "I'm not bitter, Albus. And I don't blame you. I only wish what happened then would have been enough for you to do things differently."

Albus sighed, looking down at his hands, thin and worn with age, both the colour of human hands. Nothing left of curses and ripped souls. "I wanted to," he said, and felt foolish for it. It seemed utterly inadequate in the face of the magnitude of what his sister was speaking of. He shook his head. "But there is no other way, Harry _must_ die if Voldemort ever is to be defeated."

A snort travelled across the room. "What nonsense," the Painter mumbled. Both Albus and Ariana turned to look at him, but he paid them no heed. Just kept painting.

"But it isn't," the wizard objected. "There is a part of Voldemort in Harry, and it can only be –"

"No doubt, no doubt," the Painter interrupted him with an impatient wave of his blue-tipped brush. "What I meant is, what made you believe that you had the right to decide everybody's fate?" He gave Albus a critical look over the edge of the heavy golden frame. "Without telling them, no less?" A frowned a little, then reapplied himself to his work and muttered: "_There is no other way." _

While Ariana went to resume her place on the divan, Albus stood in silence for a while, the Painter's question having settled in his mind and refusing to be shown out again.

"The knowledge how to accomplish what needed to be done," he answered it eventually. "I thought that that gave me the right. I knew more than anyone else about Tom Riddle and his Horcruxes, and I alone knew what the seventh is. What else could I have done?"

"You could have trusted," said Ariana, speaking softly in her sweet voice, but there was sadness somewhere in her features. "You could have trusted the people around you to do what was necessary even if they knew what that meant. Like you could have trusted us not to lock you up in a cottage in the country." She shrugged a little, as if to say, _Isn't that obvious?_

"The ends often are the same, you see? You went out to be a truly great wizard, and Harry Potter may defeat Lord Voldemort. It's the way you achieve these things that matters, not _that_ you do it, that makes the difference, isn't it?"

A silence followed, divided into seconds by brush-strokes and enclosed by rushing wind like an island by the sea. "When did you become so wise, little sister?"

She pursed her lips. "I've always been wise. I've just been surrounded by too many big-headed people to be noticed." [*]

Albus opened his mouth to say something to that, but found himself quite perplexed. And when had she become so cheeky? In the end, he smiled. "Yes, that is true, I believe."

He leaned on the windowsill once more and watched clouds ride by. They looked gigantic here, like something pristine and ancient.

"Well, you are right, of course. You are right," he murmured at length. "I made some sacrifices that weren't mine to make. And the worst of it is that Harry ... that Severus, and you, would have made those sacrifices anyway, is it not so?"

"No one can tell what would have been, headmaster," the Painter chimed in, cutting short whatever Ariana might have answered to that. Although Albus believed that he knew, and had always known what she would have said.

"That's the joke, isn't it? Even though you have realized that you might not have done the right things entirely, you will never know if it hasn't been for the best anyway. Or if it could have been better still, less painful, less devastating."

The light shifted oddly in the chamber. The shadows, powdery dark grey shapes on the colourful carpet, in the folds of the curtains and between all the mysteries that littered the room, suddenly writhed and curled, stretched out and shrank, climbed the walls and scampered across shelves.

The sky remained the same brilliant blue, sapphire and aquamarine and topaz, like the colours in The Painter's countless pots. But the bellies of the vast clouds, still rolling through the expanse of blue, began to shine in burning shades of red and gold, the recesses between their billows turning a fierce violet. The change was at the same time dramatic and barely there.

When all was still again in the room, it looked almost exactly the same. Perhaps it was the slightest bit dimmer. The Painter seemed to neither notice nor care.

Maybe his perception of colours had nothing to do with the light.

Albus wondered what his perception of time was. What time itself was, in this place, but he did not allow himself to dwell on that question. Such metaphysical matters were things to occupy the mind in times why nothing else encroached, no past mistakes and future disasters.

"I suppose," the wizard began slowly, for that was the question at hand, really, "that if I were to ask you something about the future, you would be able to answer me?" _Tell me if things are going to end well after all? _

The Painter interrupted his work, brush poised, eyes flicking to Albus'. "The future?" he repeated, thoughtfully, as though trying the word on. He appeared to be pondering the inquiry for a very long while, before he replied: "I'm not entirely sure what you mean by that."

Albus almost groaned. He thought that this was not the moment at all to make such a silly statement.

Quickly, he closed his eyes and found himself astonished that he should react with so little patience.

It was because he felt like he desperately needed to know what was to happen, he thought. Because he suddenly wanted, like he very obviously never had while alive, a guarantee that all the risks accepted and sacrifices made would amount to something.

Why was it that there was such a thin line between _All is well_ and _All is in ruin?_

A voice wriggled into his thoughts, pulling him back into the circle-room.

"He means the things that haven't happened yet for us," Ariana was explaining to the Painter from her place on the divan.

"Oh," the Painter said, "yes. Yes, in that case I suppose that I could answer you." He frowned slightly and waved his palette as though to shoo away some annoying little insect. "It's always so confusing, though. Telling which is which. Past, future..." His muttering trailed off as some element of his painting caught his attention and, as so often, demanded it entirely and exclusively for the moment.

Albus, in the meantime, felt his brow fold into deep furrows. Why was it that the logic of time's chronology seemed to escape this man so entirely? He took another glance at the sky, the clouds blushing with sunset. Wherever the horizon for the sun to sink beyond was.

"Time does pass here, does it not?"

"Of course," the Painter replied, in turn a little impatiently now. "It passes for you and for me. The two just don't have anything to do with one another."

"One has to be very careful," Ariana said, a mischievous smile lurking at the corners of her mouth, "not to trod on any secrets from the future here. There's no knowing whom he might be painting. It's a matter of coincidence what point in time it is when one comes here."

The Painter turned on his stool to smile at her. It was a very puzzling smile, at least Albus thought so. A secret smile. The artist's next words helped a bit, though. "You know that you're the only one who can choose to come here."

Before Albus could dig even start to puzzle over the implications of this remark, the Painter had swirled back to face him and said: "You should bear in mind, though, that things spoken about the future are very brittle, much like the skeletons of leaves. They usually crumble at the slightest touch of the present."

Albus was silent for a while. He was beginning to feel tired, and strangely heavy, as though the paint of his fingers, his feet, his head, was going damp again, dragging his limbs towards the floor. "Well," he mused, "I was not expecting to be taking bits of the future with me into the present." He looked at Ariana, who just smiled at him. Always smiling, perfectly careless. He wondered if _that_ was what death, in the end, really was. Carelessness and pure smiles.

"I suppose," he murmured slowly, feeling as though he was reciting some old wisdom memorized by heart a long time ago, "it will not be much use to hear them at all, then, will it?" What use to know now if everything was bound to break apart again, like it had after Gellert Grindelwald and their afternoon argument? It would not change a thing now, and, truth be told, Albus suddenly decided that he would rather not know just yet. There was, as though it had materialized out of nothing, a very cold, very hard knot somewhere between the layers of paint that made up his chest now. It felt like fear. The kind of dreading fear that asked, in a whisper, _What if..? _

The Painter shrugged, shattering the thought with his nonchalance. "No, not really any use."

"Well," Albus said heavily after a while, "I've left them all to it now anyway, haven't I? All there is to do now is trust." He watched another tower of clouds travel by, still the same colouring, the same shade of sunset. Everything seemed very slow here. "And what a mess I've left them in, what a mess."

With a sigh, he rubbed the bridge of his nose, only to feel a sharp rap across his knuckles. His eyes flew open, startled, and he found himself within the carved golden frame of his portrait again, and subjected to a disapproving green-and-brown gaze. "Careful," the Painter chided, waving a brush at Albus' nose. "That colour isn't completely dried yet."

This sidetracked the wizard for a moment. He inspected his fingertips thoroughly, but could not find any traces of paint other than a very faint smudge on his index finger. He decided that he probably was not entirely disfigured.

"That's the trouble with plans," the Painter's commented wisely, reminding Albus of the ongoing conversation. He glanced up from his fingertips, across the room at the other man. "If something goes awry, you can never be quite sure if everything might not go to hell."

"Yes," Albus agreed quietly, for no reason at all looking down at his fingers again. "Yes, it went all a little too fast in the end."

Ariana, he thought suddenly, clever little Ariana, was perfectly right. It was the same thing all over again. Then and now, the dominance of magic and the downfall of Voldemort, in the end it was all the same. When had he stopped to realize these things?

"It got out of hand," he murmured, as though to answer his own question, "quite out of my hands. I would have needed a little more time." He shook his head, to clear it of the odd tumult that was spreading there. Confusion never helped. Things were as they were. "Harry must find his own way now. But Severus knows. He knows what needs to be done."

"And you're sure that that's enough?" the Painter inquire from behind the portrait. "Sure he'll do all that?"

"Yes, entirely sure, I trust him completely," Albus replied, even as the Painter was still speaking, asking: "Sure you haven't asked too much of that one already?"

Albus fell silent. Had he? The question echoed through his mind again, _When did things get out of hand?_

Was it too much to ask of someone to put their life on the line and kill the one person they could trust? Well, naturally. It was more than too much.

The truth was, he had not asked Severus to do it, he had forced him into it. He had demanded a service in return for the protection of Lily Potter, and he had demanded that service to be all-encompassing. He had demanded Severus' life for it, in every possible sense of the word.

The chances that Severus would come out of the deal unscathed – or alive, for that matter – had been slim from the beginning. They still were. If Albus was being honest, he had known that all along.

The truth was, and the worst of all, that even he, Albus Dumbledore, had never been the one Severus could have trusted. If anything, Albus had been the one who had betrayed him.

"Unbelievable as it is," he said at length, very quietly, and very wearily, "yes, I am sure of that."

Albus turned to Ariana, who had picked up some crystal object, faintly blue and glinting wildly with each tiny movement, from one of the cluttered shelves and was inspecting it with fascination. She met her brother's gaze all the same, smiling. She was always smiling now. It was enough to ease the heaviness on Albus' heart a bit. She looked so happy.

"Well," he said softly, "I might yet make some amends, might I not?" He motioned to the Painter and the canvas on the easel. "There is this magnificent portrait still."

Ariana regarded him thoughtfully. "I don't know," she slowly replied. "Portrait or no, you are dead. The world belongs to the living. You will find that it is at times a lot less captivating than it used to be in life. It becomes very easy to leave it a little distance behind."

She studied her brother's face, still troubled. "Do you know what Death has taught me?" she asked.

"Aside from how to puzzle your brilliant brother?"

She smiled, but didn't respond. Instead, she went on, "That many more things than we might think end well. Maybe not as soon as we would want them to, but in their own time."

Albus raised his eyebrows at her. "Are we speaking of the grand scheme of things?" he inquired.

Ariana laughed and punched him again. "No," she said, "that's your department."

The comment elicited a smile, but not an entirely cheerful one. "Well," Albus replied, "that does not make anything much right now, does it? Aberforth would agree with me, I daresay."

His sister grinned. "Oh, yes. Although he would not express himself quite in such distinguished terms." Albus decided not to try and imagine possible profanities his brother might have employed.

Although, in all likelihood, it might not have gone amiss to have heard a couple of them over the years. The thought of Aberforth pacing his office at Hogwarts, clamouring and asking him what he was thinking, getting people entangled in his plans all over again, made Albus smile. But the smile still hurt a little.

The Painter suddenly stood up, dispelling the conversation so abruptly that all the words seemed to tumble across the carpet and end up in higgledy-piggledy piles beneath curtains and furniture. He put his tools on the table with finality and wiped his hands on a very colourfully stained piece of cloth.

"Well, jump back in," he told Albus. "It's time for you to go. You're done."

"Oh," was Albus' reply, "oh." He looked about him for a while, not moving. "Well, I'm tired now. I think I'll have to sleep some time after all." He frowned, and muttered, rather to himself, "I never understood why they did that."

"Because this place is quite exhausting to you people," the Painter explained gravely. "Hearing true things is exhausting, it seems."

"Yes...," Albus replied, "yes, I believe it is." Exhausting to find out what one's life had ultimately left behind. Exhausting to learn that one had been to some degree wrong in believing that all those long-thought-through deeds might not have been the very best ones after all.

He crossed the room to stand beside his portrait, gesturing at the room. "I suppose that I will remember none of this?"

"No," the Painter affirmed in a pleased tone of voice, like a teacher at last satisfied with his student's answer. Then he emphatically pointed at the finished portrait.

Albus turned back to Ariana, who stood beside a huge, covered painting that Albus wasn't sure had been there a moment before. She was smiling, her arms crossed, looking ... well, happy. It was a very hopeful thing to behold.

"How is it you can just come here?" he wondered.

"Oh," the Painter said, from behind him, the same proud smile in his voice. "She does quite a few things that others cannot do, your sister. She's rather special." That, she certainly was.

Ariana merely smiled her puckered smile.

The smell of paint grew stronger around Albus, and he thought the floor felt like air beneath his feet. "Will I see you again?" he asked his sister.

"If you wish," Ariana replied. "It'll be, as they say, _your_ party."

**FIN**

You've come all the way through twelve pages, now you can't very well claim that you don't have the time to drop me a line, can you? Hit the button! ;)


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